IN BRIEF: Choose one of the episodes and prompts below; write a short essay that uses a piece of scholarship from our class as critical framework through which to analyze it. Performing both formal and ideological analysis, make an argument about how the episode’s form (mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, and sound), narrative, and dialogue do ideological work. Growing Pains, “State of the Union” // Alice Leppert, “Selling Mrs. Consumer” or “I Can’t Help Feeling Maternal – I’m a Father!” // What does Alice Leppert argue about the 1980s family setting of Growing Pains? How does she situate it in a broader field of 1980s sitcoms about changing family arrangements? How does this episode dramatize those relations? What ideological work does it do to naturalize specific ideas about family, specifically relationships between parents or between parents and children? How does it construct home life and family space? https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6tec0s
